Oriental Institute

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Reading Room

In contrast to its plain exterior, the Oriental Institute’s interior exhibits the colorful and highly detailed ornamentation of the Art Deco style. The Deco touches can be seen in the generous amounts of Egyptian-like stenciling in a manner associated with “Egyptomania.”

Photo by Tom Rossiter

Museum Gallery

The various wings of the Oriental Institute Museum are organized by time period and ancient civilization, featuring artifacts from Mesopotamia, Assyria, Syria and Anatolia, Megiddo, Egypt, Nubia, and Persia.

Established in 1919 by James Henry Breasted with the support of John D. Rockefeller Jr., the Oriental Institute houses a museum and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. The building’s architects were from the late Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, of UChicago’s Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, who designed an adjacent site a few years earlier. Architecturally, both the chapel and the Oriental Institute represent prime examples of the University’s modern Gothic style. Both employ the complex massing common to medieval buildings—and to Gothic Revival—but have exterior surfaces stripped to their taut, mostly unadorned skins.

Conservation Laboratory

In addition to displaying invaluable ancient Near Eastern artifacts in its galleries, the Oriental Institute Museum also conserves material culture and determines the proper care and storage of ancient artifacts through the Conservation Laboratory.